Bell: Brian Jean coming back, says Calgary councillor

It would be hard for a lot of folks to believe it if they got the call.

Former Wildrose party leader Brian Jean coming back into Alberta politics as leader of the Freedom Conservatives, a party currently led by Derek Fildebrandt.

Taking on the United Conservatives under Jason Kenney as well as the Notley NDP. Splitting the conservative vote.

To Joe Magliocca’s ears it was big news. A political bombshell.

Joe is a Calgary city councillor. As Joe tells it, at 9:26 p.m. Monday he gets a call he didn’t expect from a person he didn’t expect.

It was from Brian Jean.

After a little chit-chat, Joe says Jean got down to business.

According to the councillor, Jean tells Joe he’s going to be holding a press conference by the end of this week. He tells Joe he is going to be leader of the Freedom Conservatives, now led by Derek Fildebrandt.

“He was serious. He was dead serious. I was stunned. I was shocked,” says Joe.

“I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”

Joe says Jean then asks him if he’d run for the Freedom Conservatives.

Jean tells Joe the city councillor would be a “champion” for his area. Joe declines.

Sometime in the conversation, Joe says he told Jean how people worked hard to bring conservatives together and if the former Wildrose leader cared about the province he would back off.

Your scribbler asks the Calgary city councillor to go through the account of the Monday night conversation one more time.

Was it really Brian Jean on the end of the phone line? And did he definitely say he was going to be the leader of the Freedom Conservatives?

Joe confirms what he’s saying is the truth and even said we could put it on the front page.

We’re not done.

A former Tory MLA says they got a call last Friday from a well-known political operative telling them Jean would announce March 15 he was going to be installed as the leader of the Freedom Conservatives.

It didn’t end there.

On the same day, another former politician told the same ex-Tory MLA they were asked by Fildebrandt if they would run for the Freedom Conservatives with Brian Jean as the leader.

Rumours of late have been swirling.

Then there was the Jean column from a few days back, where the former Wildrose leader really went after Kenney.

As you know, Kenney beat Jean in the race to be United Conservative leader.

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